a16z Podcast a16z

a16z General Partner David Haber talks with Marty Chavez, vice chairman and partner at Sixth Street Partners, about the foundational role he’s had in merging technology and finance throughout his career, and the magical promises and regulatory pitfalls of AI.

This episode is taken from “In the Vault”, a new audio podcast series by the a16z Fintech team. Each episode features the most influential figures in financial services to explore key trends impacting the industry and the pressing innovations that will shape our future.

This was a big week in the world of AI, with both OpenAI and Google dropping significant updates. So big that we decided to break things down in a new format with our Consumer partners Bryan Kim and Justine Moore. We discuss the multi-modal companions that have found their voice, but also why not all audio is the same, and why several nuances like speed and personality really matter.

a16z General Partner Anjney Midha shares his perspective on how hardware for artificial intelligence will improve —especially at the inference layer — and what that means for how we'll build, train, and interact with AI models.

In 2009 Discord cofounder and CEO, Jason Citron, started building tools and infrastructure for games. Fast forward to today and the platform has over 200 million monthly active users.

In this episode, Jason, alongside a16z General Partner Anjney Midha—who merged his company Ubiquity6 with Discord in 2021—shares insights on the nuances of community-driven product development, the shift from gamer to developer, and Discord’s longstanding commitment to platform extensibility.

Now, with Discord's recent release of embeddable apps, what can we expect now that it's easier than ever for developers to build?

Human nature fears the unknown, and with the rapid progress of AI, concerns naturally arise. Uncanny robocalls, data breaches, and misinformation floods are among the worries. But what about security in the era of large language models?

In this episode, we hear from security leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Matt Knight, Head of Security at OpenAI, Jason Clinton, CISO at Anthropic, and Vijay Bolina, CISO at Google DeepMind, are joined by Joel de la Garza, operating partner at a16z and former chief security officer at Box and Citigroup.

Together, they explore how large language models impact security, including changes in offense and defense strategies, misuse by nation-state actors, prompt engineering, and more. In this changing environment, how do LLMs transform security dynamics? Let's uncover the answers.

In recent years, the AI landscape has seen huge advancements, from the release of Dall-E 2 in April 2022 to the emergence of AI music and video models in early 2024.

While creative tools often steal the spotlight, AlphaFold 2 marked a groundbreaking AI breakthrough in biology in 2021. Since its release, this pioneering tool for predicting protein structures has been utilized by over 1.7 million scientists worldwide, influencing fields ranging from genomics to computational chemistry.

In this episode, DeepMind's VP of Research for Science, Pushmeet Kohli, and a16z General Partner Vijay Pande discuss the transformative potential of AI in scientific exploration. Can AI lead to fundamentally new discoveries in science? Let's find out.